What are Friends For?
Article for The Stoic Magazine
Our circumscribed lives of recent months sharply remind us of our social nature. Many of us sometimes feel we are loosing our moorings. We are. Normally we are secured within the relationships of everyday life, which is largely where we build and reinforce our identities, values, and convictions. Even Michelle Obama recently described herself as mildly “depressed,” which I take to mean feeling cut off from a form of essential nourishment—meaningful in-person contact.
Though our traditional ways of gathering and communicating have shifted, during this time of uncertainty friendship is a sanity saver from the echo chambers of our minds, a necessary vitamin. The Stoics have much to say about the value of true friendship and strenuously counsel us to be discerning in our choice of friends. That someone offers us their companionship or a shared interest is not sufficient grounds for admission into our minds, hearts, and schedules.
If you are lonely, like many of us who have recently become more homebound, you can be tempted to engage with anyone who extends a positive overture. Here Epictetus raises a red flag to remind us of the powerful contagion of character, be it good or bad. We want to “keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” (The Art of Living, p. 54) In Epictetus’ formulation a friend worth having is someone who elevates us, who points us toward our best self, who walks alongside us on our path toward virtue. Or, as my grandmother would say, “You don’t have to waste your time with anything the cat happened to bring in!”
Friendships assume different forms and functions. There’s that buddy who you know will pick you up from the airport at three o’clock in the morning when the shuttle isn’t running, the fair-weather friend with whom you share a hobby or profession, the friend who entertains you or offers you access to experiences or social circles you wouldn’t otherwise enjoy. All friendship is colored in different degrees by the characteristics of friendship Aristotle outlined: friendships of utility, of pleasure, of good.
Epictetus and his fellow Stoics, particularly Seneca recognize the value of the utilitarian and pleasurable dimensions of friendship, but they enjoin us to make sure all our alliances are foremost “friendships of good.” This makes sense. We’ve all heard of someone who started “running with a bad crowd,” which became his undoing. Or perhaps we ourselves remember an ill-chosen friendship which began to take its toll disrupting our equanimity, pointing our attention to trivialities, hollow pleasures, or degradation of the spirit.
This is why I love philosophy. It focuses on the most fundamental questions whose answers are typically thought to be self-evident. When the Stoics tell us to seriously consider the people whom we call our friends to determine if they are our partners in worthiness, they are doing us a big favor, one whose positive results will determine the very quality of the rest of our lives.
Copyright © by Sharon Lebell 2020
